Bed-Stuy Gateway and the Fulton-Nostrand Revitalization Project

About the Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District

 

The Vision of the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Steering Committee:

We declare that the Bedford-Stuyvesant Gateway business district is the business and cultural destination of choice for all residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, northern Crown Heights, Ocean Hill and Brownsville.

Through the services of the BID, We are committed to:
•      A safe, clean and aesthetically attractive commercial and cultural destination;
•      Fostering thriving and profitable businesses;
•      Providing a variety of retail goods and services from a mixture of national brand and locally-based companies, including minority and women-owned small businesses;
•    Valuing the diverse history, culture and styles of the residents of the Bedford-Stuyvesant and wider Central Brooklyn communities by offering goods and services that respond to the community’s wants and desires.

Jump to Sections:

• What is a BID and why form one now in Bedford-Stuyvesant?
• Facts about the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID
• FAQ's about BID's, by the New York City Department of Small Business Services
• Voice your support for the formation of the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID by signing our ballot and email/fax or mail it back to us. Click Here to download the Bed-Stuy Gateway Ballot Form PDF to your Computer. Print it out, fill in all fields (very important) and fax it to (718) 636-6903 or mail it back to us. For more information about the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Formation Campaign, call (718) 636-6989 or email

Bed-Stuy Gateway BID in the Press/Media:
Link: Queens area fights to stay low-rise; another campaign for Bed-Stuy BID | Crain's New York Business (subscription required). PDF Version: Click Here to Download

PDF: New York Daily News - April 15, 2007 - Bed-Stuy in a BID for BIZ - by Rachel Monahan

PDF: Our Time Press - April 16, 2007 - Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant a Success!

News 12 Brooklyn Reporter George Spencer Provides an Overview of the Proposal to Create the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID - first aired Monday, April 16, 2007. News 12 Brooklyn is available only on Cablevision and Time Warner Cable Systems in New York City.

A Bed-Stuy Video Introduction

Ahh...the joys of YouTube. While perusing the YouTube video vault this evening, we came across this excellent and expertly produced short video about the Bed-Stuy community at a crossroads; It's a great introduction to the contemporary neighborhood appropriate for old timers and newbies. Created by Blue Boat Productions.

Inaugural Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant: What an amazing party

What an amazing party we had in Bedford-Stuyvesant this past Thursday, April 12. The inaugural Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant was a smashing success and we want to thank everyone who helped to make the event such a success, from our event sponsors, to our elected officials, organization partners, merchant association members, volunteers and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbors who all came out to help us kick off the public phase of the Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District Formation Campaign (more details on that to come soon on this website).

Our very own Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz kicked off the Toast and the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Campaign in boisterous Brooklyn style with a proclamation.

From Toast to Bedf...

Elected Officials and Leaders of the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Steering Committee celebrate the Borough President's proclamation of April 12, 2007 as Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant Day in Brooklyn.

From left to right: Edmon Braithwaite (Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Steering Committee Co-Chair, Vice President of Fulton-Nostrand United Merchants Assn.), NYS Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries, NYC Council Member Letitia James, NYS Assemblymember Annette M. Robinson, Joel Dabu (Executive Director, FNUMA; Commercial Revitalization Manager, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corp.), Hardy Joe Long (President, FNUMA), Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Noah Katz (Bed-Stuy Gateway BID Steering Committee Co-Chair), Colvin W. Grannum (President/CEO, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation).

From Toast to Bedf...

Bacardi USA and its brands was one of the 18 companies represented at the Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Wellcare Health Plans, a Corporate Member of FNUMA, was also the sponsor of the entertainment at the Toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant.

From Toast to Bedf...

The Brandon Sanders Jazz Ensemble really jazzed up the house.

Finally, a toast to Bedford-Stuyvesant's bright future.

From Toast to Bedf...

Bushbaby Coffee and Tea Gets Some Nice Web Exposure

We've written about bushbaby Coffee and Tea in these pages before and we're proud to see that the little coffee shop in Bed-Stuy has gotten a great marketing boost courtesy of VISA and MSN.

Previously: "Bushbaby" - Fulton Street's Beautiful New Coffee House

Link: Business Breakthrough - presented by Visa.

Nurturing Home Producers to Run Retail Shops - New York Times

Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

Incubator for business Selma Jackson, left, manager of 4W Circle of Art and Enterprise in Brooklyn, with Cae Byng, whose company is J & L Handmade Soap.

Opening a small business is no trivial feat. 4W Circle of Art and Enterprise, a 15-year-old incubator for retail shops that describes its mission as "providing home-based African-American entrepreneurs, especially women, the opportunity to realize the dream of establishing their own retail stores" shows shows one way budding entrepreneurs can get a taste of running and operating a small business prior to actually opening in a single storefront. 4W Circle of Art and Enterprise is located on Fulton Street in Fort Greene.

Link: Nurturing Home Producers to Run Retail Shops - New York Times.

Article: "A Renaissance Comes to 'The Alamo' of Bed-Stuy" - June 5, 2006 - The New York Sun

The New York Sun has this timely article about Bed-Stuy's continuing renewal and rebirth, which the article attributes heavily to the dramatic drop in reported crime in the neighborhood's 79th and 81st precincts.

In the last four or five years, advocates and real estate experts say that market forces and a lower crime rate has sparked a renaissance driven by real estate and increased private investment. With buyers being priced out of Manhattan and even out of Brooklyn's more tony neighborhoods, Bed-Stuy's stock of more than 4,000 brownstone buildings are in increasing demand, and prices have been rising steadily.

A community leader, Colvin Grannum, who heads the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, said, "We haven't seen this level of private sector investment probably 70 years."

Much of that improvement, Mr. Grannum said, is from a precipitous decline in crime. Statistics from the two police precincts that cover the neighborhood show a drop in crime by about 70% since 1990, a percentage that is in line with a citywide crime reduction over that time period.

Link: A Renaissance Comes to 'The Alamo' of Bed-Stuy - June 5, 2006 - The New York Sun.

Special Screening of "Bullets in the Hood"

We at Bed-Stuy Gateway have been feeling really "Bed-Stuy and Proud of It" in recent days. The review of our neighborhood by that charming UK couple-turned Bed-Stuy residents in The Times of London made us feel really warm and fuzzy about our brownstoned neighborhood. This past weekend, we also caught a showing of Dave Chappelle's Block Party, which was largely filmed just a few blocks away at Quincy and Downing Streets, and which featured great music and lots of love for "The Stuy" from the likes of Kanye West, Mos Def, the Roots and assorted concertgoers.

We've even started to feel nostalgic for the good old days of the Bed-Stuy ca.1982 that Chris Rock inhabits in "Everybody Hates Chris", but we quickly realized that our neighborhood does indeed contain traces of a downtrodden and violent recent past that don't really convey in "Everybody Hates Chris".

Nothing reminds us of this more than the independent film "Bullets in the Hood" which chronicles the tense hours and days after 19-year old Timothy Stansbury was shot and killed by a police officer in Bed-Stuy in January 2004. This documentary film, which was created by Terrence Fisher, a friend of Timothy Stansbury, and fellow teen filmmaker Daniel Howard, was honored with a "Special Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking" at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and has gone on to screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and American Black Film Festival.

Today we received a flyer letting us know that Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation is hosting a special screening of "Bullets in the Hood" and discussion with the two young filmmakers and the mother of the late Timothy Stansbury. The screening is open to the public, but space is limited. Here are the details.

• Monday, March 20, 2006 - 7pm Sharp. Arrive early, space is limited
• Suggested donation of $5 to support the Timothy Stansbury Memorial Foundation
• Location: The Billie Holiday Theater at Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY

Link: 'Dave Chappelle's Block Party' - Salon
Link: Review: Dave Chappell's Block Party - New York Newsday
Previously: The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming! - BedStuyGateway

The British Are Coming, the British Are Coming!

You just gotta love those Google Alerts. It's like a trusty labrador retriever: you tell her, "go fetch me all the news on Bed-Stuy" and she comes back on a daily basis with everything, useful or not, that has even a mention of the phrase. Well in our inbox today was this precious gem of an article from across the pond in The Times of London about a UK couple that has found brownstone bliss in Bed-Stuy, and they're proud of it.

Murder, drugs and guns were just some of the terms used by people who tried to warn us against buying a brownstone townhouse in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. But the abundance of exquisite and unspoilt late Victorian architecture, its proximity to Manhattan and the bargain prices on offer in the supposed gangster’s paradise they call Bed-Stuy were enough for my fiancée Alida and I to ignore the nay sayers for long enough to discover that they were quite wrong.

After reading this glowing review of our beloved Bed-Stuy, we can't help but wonder: Is The Times doing a Lenten penance for the smackdown of an article it published on June 25, 2005 in which reporter Dominic Rushe said Bed-Stuy is "a horrible and inconvenient area of Brooklyn with some lovely buildings and a nasty crack habit." ?

Link: Big Apple's Core Appeal - The Times of London
Previously: On Wall Street: Dominic Rushe: Big Apple Homes Are Ripe for a Fall - The Times of London via Brownstoner

Coverage of Applebee's Grand Opening

Here is some coverage from Tuesday night's opening party at Applebee's Bedford Stuyvesant.
Restaurant Grand Opening Celebrates New Food, Jobs in Bed-Stuy - NY1: Brooklyn
Applebee's Grand Opening Photo Album - Bed-Stuy Gateway

Will the Real Bed-Stuy Please Stand Up?

Bedford Stuyvesant is a neighborhood with a reputation that often looms much larger than its real world counterpart.  Check out these two articles, one from the New York Times and another from The Wagner Planner that speak to the idea of the representation versus reality of Bed-Stuy.

Link: 'Wonder Years,' by Way of Bed-Stuy - New York Times.
Link: "Perception Versus Reality in Bed-Stuy" - November '05 issue of The Wagner Planner

New York Daily News - Bed-Stuy exhibit reveals students' frame of mind

One of Fulton Street's best kept artistic secrets is the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation's Skylight Gallery.  Located on the 3rd Floor of 1368 Fulton Street, the Skylight Gallery hosts rotating exhibits of art by local artists. 

The New York Daily News reviewed the current exhibit in an article on November 27, 2005. 

"Each year, Red Clay Arts, a multimedia nonprofit group in Bedford-Stuyvesant, chooses young people from central Brooklyn and another part of the world to learn about photography and each other in a project called "One Shot."

To view the One Shot exhibit, visit the Skylight Gallery at 1368 Fulton Street.  Take the elevators to the 3rd Floor.  Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

Link: New York Daily News - Boroughs - Bed-Stuy exhibit reveals students' frame of mind.
Link: The Skylight Gallery homepage
Link: Red Clay Arts

A Home With Charm, and Challenges - New York Times

Bed-Stuy, with its beautiful stock of magnificent, pre-war homes chock full of architectural detail, is attracting not only price-conscious Manhattanites, but also retaining long-time Bed-Stuy residents.  Take a look at the Bobb-Semple family profiled in November 18th's "Habitats" column in the New York Times. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bobb-Semple joined a curious subset of Bedford-Stuyvesant's gentrification when they bought their MacDonough Street house for $548,000 in 2004. Though they are part of the wave that's transforming the neighborhood, the Bobb-Semples didn't arrive from Manhattan or more affluent parts of brownstone Brooklyn.

Instead, they were gentrifying from the inside. Mrs. Bobb-Semple was raised in Brooklyn, and her husband arrived from Guyana in the fifth grade. Her parents were longtime Bedford-Stuyvesant residents. And the couple had been live-in landlords in a nearby three-unit brownstone they bought for $155,000 in 1995.

Congratulations and kudos to the Bobb-Semples for continuing to invest in Bed-Stuy.  However, we're not quite sure why the author of the article characterizes the Bobb-Semples as part of "a curious subset of Bedford-Stuyvesant's gentrification."  First of all, when people move within a neighborhood, it's termed "incumbent upgrading" not gentrification.  Furthermore, isn't commitment to a community in the mold of the Bobb-Semples exactly what you want to happen in a community?   And why exactly is their decision curious as opposed to the decision of these two new Bed-Stuy homeowners?

Link: A Home With Charm, and Challenges - New York Times.
Link: 2 Guys, 2 Sheepdogs, a Flock of Neighbors - New York Times

"Stretching Your Rental Dollar in New York"

Via Brownstoner, this article comes from the New York Daily News which scans the five boroughs to find the least expensive places to live and highlights Bedford Stuyvesant as its Brooklyn pick. 

Give Bed-Stuy a try if Brooklyn's where you want to be.

Rental apartments can be found in its handsome brownstones and brick row houses — just like in pricier Brooklyn nabes. Once stigmatized for its high crime rate (and parodied in the Chris Rock TV show "Everybody Hates Chris"), Bedford-Stuyvesant has turned around and is popular with brownstone buyers. And transportation's a cinch — the A train gets you to lower Manhattan in 15 minutes, and midtown in 25 minutes.

One-bedrooms are available for $1,000 to $1,100 per month in Bed-Stuy — in Brooklyn Heights, they're $1,700 to $2,000.

Link: Stretching Your Rental Dollar in New York [Brownstoner]      

Forgotten NY: Fulton St. Bedford Stuyvesant

Check out this photographic tour of Street Scenes on Fulton Street from Fort Greene to Broadway Junction, including Bed-Stuy, put together by the folks at Forgotten-NY.   

THERE ain't no Starbucks, fancy chocolate makers, chi-chi restaurants, velvet-rope nightclubs with 300-pound bouncers, 2-million-dollar condos, Fairways, Ikeas, hardly any IPods...just a lot of jewelry stores. Must be two to a block. Just a lot of NYC's most intriguing architecture alternating with some of the most godawfulest you can imagine, and sprinkle in some itrems left over from the Truman administration and you've got Fulton Street from the eastern edge of Fort Greene through Bedford-Stuyvesant and on to the tangled, intertwined elevated train complex in East New York.

Link: Forgotten-NY: fultonbedstuy.

Crain's: The Billie Holiday Gets a Facelift

34 years young and getting a facelift.  Bed-Stuy's own Billie Holiday Theater is getting a makeover thanks to $900,000 donated by Mr. Brooklyn himself, Borough  President Marty Markowitz.  According to its website, The Billie Holiday Theater "has nurtured the careers of Oscar-nominated actor Samuel L. Jackson; multitalented performer, choreographer and director Debbie Allen; television, film and theater producer Samm-Art Williams; musician, composer and playwright Weldon Irvine (TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK); actress Tichina Arnold ("Rochelle Rock" on UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris"); award-winning scenic designer Felix Cochren and many others."  At a ceremony on Wednesday, 10/26, The Billie Holiday Theater accepted a check from the Borough President and honored actress Ruby Dee.    
Link: Crain's New York Business news, lists, rankings, directory and more.